Violência e cordialidade na literatura brasileira contemporânea: um estudo do romance essa gente, de Chico Buarque

Abstract

In this work we analyze the narrative processes of the novel Essa gente (2019), by Chico Buarque, starting from the hypothesis that the oscillation between the poles of reality and imagination, associated with the decentering of the narrative angle in the text, brings violence, authoritarian impetus and cordiality, which, in the Brazilian case, form one of the bases for the mediation of social relations. We propose to demonstrate that the narrative composition of the corpus – particularly the narration volubility and the narrators’ elaboration – operates as an important literary device that enhances the social examination, revealing that violence and authoritarianism are not restricted to periods of greater control by the State – as in the case of the last Brazilian civil-military dictatorship –, but they are also elements diluted in the social body itself. In Essa gente (2019), the narrative point of view, sometimes conducted by Duarte, sometimes by other narrators, points here and there marks of a violence that refer not only to Brazilian social inequality, but also to an inscription of violence that signals to the formation of a country. In this novel, Rio de Janeiro serves as a kind of microcosm of conflictual relationships in the tropics. The work is structured in a hybrid way, involving letters, telephone transcripts, notes, court documents, news, novel chapters, excerpts from songs, among other textual genres, which refers to the fragmentary character of the narrative, as a symptom of contemporary literature. When put in articulation, these fragments give concreteness to a narrative capable of going from the comic to the corrosive criticism. To validate the hypothesis, we carried out a reading with observance of the mechanisms of the work constitution in the violence exposure. In order to understand the relationship between literature and violence, the ideas of Jaime Ginzburg (2012, 2017) are fundamental; to probe, in the novel, the exposure of violence and its intimate relationship with Brazilian cordiality, readings by Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (2016) and João Cezar de Castro Rocha (2005, 2006) are indispensable; in order to understand the process of socially established authoritarianism in Brazil, dialogue with Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro (1991) and Renato Janine Ribeiro (1999) is essential; to understand the relationship between social fabric and literary form, Antonio Candido's (2011) notes are relevant. The reflection of Giorgio Agamben (2009) contributes to the formulation of a concept about the contemporary, while Karl Erik Schollhammer (2009), Regina Dalcastagnè (2012) and Leyla Perrone-Moisés (2016) provide a broad scenario about contemporary literature, helping to map its main features and shapes. In the analysis of the novel, we verified that the narrative form is decisive for the investigation that the work makes of Brazilian social violence. The better perception of the scene of violence is also due to the narrative procedure, which plays a central role in the aesthetic realization of the novel by the carioca writer.